I struggle to write today. Not that this week has been one short of lessons, learning, growth, but simply because it has been a slow process, this waiting period, full of desert, dryness, weariness. All things considered, I feel like a broken record, telling my three blog readers, two of them being my mother or my husband, that the circumstances simply haven’t changed so the wilderness continues to call.

Yet, I can’t help but continue to ask the question if the wilderness is not my circumstances, but instead, the darkness in my heart?

I have gotten a glimpse of that darkness this week in multiple ways. By the grace of God, a weed was finally identified, and now that the knowledge that it exists is present, it can be rooted out. Darkness creeps in ever so gently in the sins of greed and lust, sneaking in under the guise of even encouragement given from others. Not only, then, did the powerful words of those above me full of kindness fuel passion in my heart, but a distaste for what I was given here and now, a full blown massacre of discontentment breeding envy and hate. The wilderness was a different flavor of pride in my heart, disguising itself with words that make me believe I deserve something other than death.

And again, the darkness of my heart exposed itself in ways that I had prayed for, my scales to fall off, to have eyes to see. It takes less than nine full seconds to shift from Godward hope to believing with my whole heart the lies of the enemy. How did I allow for satan’s voice to be louder than the gospel I know to be true, even when things around me are speaking the opposite?

The wilderness that I have felt merely circumstantial, merely other people’s fault, merely a season that will be over once those who have supposed power change what I believe is wrong, is not only this season of unknown future, but also a mirror into the treasures that have been worshipped for too long in the depths of my soul. This heart, this idol factory, has grasped and grasped and is found wanting although its hands are full of greed, malice, pride, lust, envy.

Lord, have mercy.

We ended our sabbath with a sermon we missed on Daniel 3, with of course, unannounced veggie tales songs from my childhood interjecting here and there. God is always faithful to speak what we need to hear, regardless of whether or not we think we need it. My heart has testified a similar story, bowing down to the idols of our day, even if there’s no music to cue my false worship.

You become what you worship.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

— Daniel 3:16-18

But, if not.

Here’s where it comes full circle, to the time where we take the bread and the wine and both say to one another, “It would have been enough.” Whatever the outcome may be, wilderness or highway, giving or taking away, the saving grace of His contraditional love He has given at great cost has been enough. When I am faithless, He is unchanging and faithful. Taste and see, that no matter the circumstances around, that the Lord is good. There is rest in these glorious truths.